" to know his place?" How is this extended by the most celebrated amplifier of our age ?

Canst thou set forth th' ethereal mines on high,
Which the refulgent ore of light supply?
Is the celestial furnace to thee known,
In which I melt the golden metal down ?
Treasures, from whence I deal out light as fast,
As all my stars and lavish suns can waste *.

The same author has amplified a passage in the civth psalm; "he looks on the earth, and it trembles. He touches the hills, and they smoke."

The hills forget they're fix'd, and in their fright
Cast off their weight, and ease themselves for flight:
The woods with terrour wing'd outfly the wind,
And leave the heavy, panting hills behind †.

You here see the hills not trembling, but shaking off woods from their backs, to run the faster: after this you are presented with a foot-race of mountains and woods, where the woods distance the mountains, that, like corpulent pursy fellows, come puffing and panting a vast way behind them.

CHAP. IX.

Of imitation, and the manner of imitating. THAT the true authors of the profund are to imitate diligently the examples in their own way, is not to be questioned, and that divers have by this means attained to a depth, whereunto their own weight could never have carried them, is evident by sundry instances. Who sees not that De Foe was the poetical son of Withers, Tate of Ogilby, E. Ward of John Taylor, and Eusden of Blackmore? Therefore when we sit down to write, let us bring some great author to our mind, and ask ourselves this question; how would Sir Richard have said this? do I express myself as simply as Ambrose Philips ? or flow my numbers with the quiet thoughtlessness of Mr. Welsted?

But it may seem somewhat strange to assert, that our proficient should also read the works of those famous poets, who have excelled in the sublime: yet is not this a paradox. As Virgil is said to have read Ennius, out of his dunghill to draw gold; so may our author read Shakspeare, Milton, and Dryden, for the contrary end, to bury their gold in his own dunghill. A true genius, when he finds any thing lofty or shining in them, will have the skill to bring it down, take off the gloss, or quite discharge the colour, by some ingenious circumstance or periphrase, some addition or diminution, or by some of those figures, the use of which we shall show in our next chapter.

The book of Job is acknowledged to be infinitely sublime, and yet has not the father of the bathos reduced it in every page? Is there a passage in all Virgil more painted up and laboured than the description of Etna in the third Æneid ?

Horrificis juxta tonat Ætna ruinis, Interdumque atram prorumpit ad æthera nubem, Turbine fumantem piceo, et candente favilla, Attollitque globos flammarum, et sidera lambit: Interdum scopulos avulsaque viscera montis Erigit eructans, liquefactaque saxa sub auras Cum gemitu glomerat, fundoque exæstuat imo.

(I beg pardon of the gentle English reader, and such of our writers as understand not Latin.) Lo! how this is taken down by our British poet, by the single happy thought of throwing the mountain into

a fit of the colic.

Etna, and all the burning mountains, find
Their kindled stores with inbred storms of wind
Blown up to rage; and roaring out complain,
As torn with inward gripes, and tort'ring pain:
Lab'ring, they cast their dreadful vomit round,
And with their melted bowels spread the ground *.

Horace, in search of the sublime, struck his head against the stars † ; but Empedocles, to fathom the profund, threw himself into Ætna. And who but would imagine our excellent modern had also been there, from this description?

Imitation is of two sorts; the first is, when we force to our own purposes the thoughts of others; the second, consists in copying the imperfections or blemishes of celebrated authors. I have seen a play professedly writ in the style of Shakespeare, wherein the resemblance lay in one single line,

And so good morrow t' ye, good master licutenant.

And sundry poems in imitation of Milton, where, with the utmost exactness, and not so much as one exception, nevertheless was constantly nathless, embroidered was broidered, hermits were eremites, disdained 'sdeigned, shady umbrageous, enterprise emprize, pagan paynim, pinions pennons, sweet dulcet, orchards orchats, bridge-work pontifical; nay her was hir, and their was thir through the whole poems. And in very deed, there is no other way, by which the true modern poet could read to any purpose the works of such men, as Milton and Shakspeare.

It may be expected, that like other criticks I should next speak of the passions: but as the main end and principal effect of the bathos is to produce tranquillity of mind (and sure it is a better design to promote sleep than madness) we have little to say on this subject. Nor will the short bounds of this discourse allow us to treat at large of the emollients and opiates of poesy; of the cool, and the manner of producing it; or of the methods used by our authors in managing the passions. I shall but transiently remark, that nothing contributes so much to the cool, as the use of wit in expressing pas.ion: the true genius rarely fails of points, conceits, and proper similes on such occasions: this we may term the pathetic epigrammatical, in which even puns are made use or with good success. Hereby our best authors have avoided throwing themselves or their readers into any indecent transports.

But, as it is sometimes needful to excite the passions of our antagonist in the polemick way, the true students in the law have constantly taken their methods from low life, where they observed, that to move anger, use is made of scolding and railing; to move love, of bawdry; to beget favour and frendship, of gross flattery; and to produce fear, of calumniating an adversary with crimes obnoxious to the

As for shame, it is a silly passion, of which as our authors are incapable themselves, so they would not produce it in others.

CHAP. X.

Of tropes and figures: and first of the variegating, confounding, and reversing figures.

BUT we proceed to the figures. We cannot too earnestly recommend to our authors the study of the abuse of speech. They ought to lay it down as a principle, to say nothing in the usual way, but (if possible) in the direct contrary. Therefore the figures must be so turned, as to manifest that intricate and wonderful cast of head, which distinguishes all writers of this kind: or (as I may say) to refer exactly the mould, in which they were formed, in all its inequalities, cavities, obliquities, odd crannies, and distortions.

It would be endless, nay impossible to enumerate all such figures; but we shall content ourselves to range the principal, which most powerfully contribute to the bathos, under three classes.

I. The variegating, confounding, or reversing tropes and figures.

II. The magnifying, and
III. The diminishing.

We cannot avoid giving to these the Greek or Roman names; but in tenderness to our countrymen and fellow writers, many of whom, however exquisite, are wholly ignorant of those languages, we have also explained them in our mother tongue.

Of the first sort, nothing so much conduces to the bathos, as the

CATA